Posted
by
CmdrTaco
on Tuesday March 15, 2011 @04:56PM
from the also-something-about-bases dept.

An anonymous reader writes "At South by Southwest Interactive 2011 in Austin, Texas this week, 4chan founder Christopher Poole (also known as 'moot') took the stage to talk about various online issues. One of these was how important anonymity is on the Internet and how Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg doesn't get it."

If the claim is "anonymity is valued on the Internet, and Facebook has got it wrong", then I'd say Zuckerberg having a company that has an astronomical value and millions of members who don't seem to give a shit about anonymity, then yes, I'd say that makes Zuckerberg right and this guy wrong.

Not really. Anonymity might be valued, but so might personal information. To make money off one of them, you need 1) the ability to deliver, 2) a method for getting paid, and 3) wealthy customers. Facebook gets all of these, 4chan only the first one (and to a limited degree). Also note that Facebook's customers (the source of its revenue) aren't the users, but the advertisers. Invading the privacy of millions of others is obviously worth a lot more than simply saving your own.

Ahh, you just hit the real crux of the game. To these guys, they're in charge... so telling each other "you're wrong" is their whole world view.

The fact that millions of people agree or disagree with them, doesn't matter at all to their distorted view of the world. They argue amongst themselves and whatever us "millions" do, must have happened because of something THEY did, not our own free will.

Yes, it does. If you're aim is to make lots of money. If you don't like FB's policies, here's a shocker for you, don't use it you twat.

That would be a great idea, if Facebook would mind it's own business.

But FB will happily let other users slap your name all over photos (and if you're not a user, you won't be notified that Goatse is now labeled as being *you*). Those "like" buttons that are popping up all over the bloody place? They track you even if you're not registered with Facebook. And now they're farming out their logins for other sites (my local paper now requires a Facebook account to send a letter to the editor).

I don't for myself, but you know what? Sometimes you don't want to let a con man take advantage of other people. Yes, it's terrible wanting to impose on somebody else's freedom and liberty, and I'll feel bad about it for about -3 seconds, but hey, it's for the best really.

You can't help those that don't want to be helped. You ought to believe that people are entitled to make mistakes, if only because you want the right to take actions that others believe are mistaken.

Consider the situation if the roles were reversed. You are a consumer that enjoys Facebook and doesn't care much about the privacy implications of having your vacation pictures and some banal details online. Some guy tries to explain to you that its evil and simply will not take "I like Facebook leave me alone" for an answer. What are you supposed to think, other than "this guy ought to mind his own business"?

It's disturbingly common how many intelligent but partisan people get into the rut of believing that everyone who has thought about something must have come to the same conclusion. I feel like I hear it from everywhere these days -- the FSF crowed, the console fanboys, the Tea Party -- everyone seems convinced that no honest person could possibly disagree with them. Again, these are generally intelligent people, so much so that you would imagine they could grok the idea that thoughtful and honest people could legitimately disagree about the purity/utility of FSF, the merit of consoles or PCs or the values and policies in our country.

At least I imagine it sometimes, and then I read these posts and am shaken back into hyper-partisan reality.

I'm telling you what you ought to believe if you want to be consistent with your own expectations. You certainly can persist in saying that you are entitled to judge for others what is best for them concurrently with saying that others are not entitled to judge what is best for you. I, for one, will not take such a transparently non-universal position.

This is really no more than Kant's categorical imperative -- do not presume to substitute your preferences for others' for the same reason (and by the same logic) that you do not want others to substitute their preferences for yours.

And consider it from the view of the Anti-Facebook opponent, with somebody mindlessly doing something that is unwise at best, dangerous at worse. Did you do that?

Dangerous and unwise in your judgment. Do you allow for the fact that perhaps someone else, seeing the same facts, could come to a different conclusion, or do we all have to abide by your estimation of what is dangerous and what is not?

No, you did not, because you're stuck in the mental trap of chasing a false idealization of liberty and freedom, of somehow it being good for folks to be allowed to stick their hands in fires to learn from it instead of saying "Hey that's hot, stop!" .

If an adult wants to stick his hand in the fire, that's his business. If he seems inclined to listen to my advice, I will share my opinion with him. What I'm not going to do is start interjecting myself into what other human beings want to do with their own hands and their own fires against their will.

Otherwise, when I turn around and want to ride my motorcycle or eat some Cheetos, I will have no grounds to complain when the safety sissies or the nutrition naysayers start berating me for my choices that they think are dangerous or harmful.

Quid pro quo -- I'll leave you to make mistakes (that you think are not mistakes) and you'll leave me to make mistakes (that I think are not mistakes). Note the beautiful symmetry of the situation -- it's exactly the same if you swap the identities of the participants. If you want to propose a contrary arrangement that obeys that symmetry -- that operates the same on you with relation to everyone else as it operates on everyone else with relation to you -- be my guest, but such a symmetry is a fundamental requirement.

No. 4chan takes $85,000 in ads per year just to break even [imageshack.us]. Canv.as' $650,000 of investors' money can hardly be counted to his personal wealth either. If he has other money, he hasn't let 4chan know.

Exactly. Sorry Moot, you have a good point, but Zuckerberg didn't hear you over the sound of how much money he made in the time it took you to make that statement. Moot seems to genuinely care about online anonymity, but Zuckerberg cares about making money and doesn't think twice about selling every piece of info he has on you to anyone who wants it.

Yeah, diaspora's really a resounding success, just look at their github: a handful of contributors actually working on the code (one of the more active ones recently appears to be someone who isn't even a member of the original "Diaspora" team), a steady downward trend on the pageviews graph, and no notable news since November's alpha testing started, other than a blog post at the end of January saying "We're still like, working on stuff, and we're still super-relevant, just look at these blogs that called us cool!"

With success like that, it's just a matter of weeks before Facebook is obsolete.

To play devil's advocate: what is this incredibly sensitive personal information that Facebook has that could not be obtained by anyone else very easily?

You know that is is actually trivial to find the sexual orientation of people [telegraph.co.uk], even for those that has not
disclosed it? And who knows what else that might be possible to pick out from such a system.
That you're a virgin? That you pick your nose? That you actually like "Never Gonna Give You Up" by Rick Astley?

Remember Clasmates.com? Sounded like a great idea, but they charged money to use it. Facebook is free, and is for people who want to know their other real life friends/family. You just gotta treat Facebook with the tact of if you were running for public office... Because if you run for public office, they'll certainly look at what you said on Facebook. To me, it is a win because we won't have future politicians of America to have talked all sorts of drunken fratboy chat on Facebook in their younger year

...Once this happens, people might go,"Oh, wow, I gotta monitor what comes out of my mouth instead of being a non-stop idiot"

Yeah, because being non-stop idiots with diarrhea of the mouth has stopped soooo many politicians from getting and/or staying elected. You might want to hear/read some of the dribble these politicians are spewing now on Facebook, Fox News, and MSNBC and you "poke" me when one of these politicians lose an election because of a stupid/racist/offensive status update.

you don't have to update your friends on every BJ you happen to give or receive, you know.

yes, control of what you post on facebook is firmly in Zuckerberg's hands, but control of what you type in there yourself is quite literally in your hands

Very true. I don't post pictures to my profile, although others do tag me. I don't list any personal information at all, not even there but allegedly hidden behind privacy controls. The posts I make are few and far between, with no drama or anything.

My hope for the end of anonymity is that people will someday realize that everyone makes mistakes. Everyone does things that we may find objectionable. Pretending not to is no way to bring people together. My hope is that one day we will learn to accept others for who they truly are.

“Mark Zuckerberg has kind of equated anonymity with a lack of authenticity, almost a cowardice,” said Poole. “I would say that’s totally wrong. I think anonymity is authenticity. It allows you to share in a completely unvarnished, unfiltered, raw way. I think that’s something that’s extremely valuable. In the case of content creation, it just allows you to play in ways that you may not have otherwise. We believe in content over creator.”

Of course he heard about pen names and handles, and was 100% aware of MySpace and a million other blogs and boards in 2003.

The crux of the matter is that Zuckerberg's customers Really Want To Know Your Real Name Because That Helps Them Make Lots Of Money. The Customer is always right. The neat trick was convincing 500 million FacebookFriends to use their real names, and emotional manipulation about authenticity and, initially, exclusivity, helped.

This illustrates part of Moot's point, I think; before you can begin to receive his idea, let alone process it, you already know who made the statement, and that has colored your perception in some way (you aren't obviously for or against 4chan, but you clearly know what it is). Anonymity is therefore arguably better for the transmission and sharing of ideas, because each idea is forced/allowed to stand on its own. Obviously there is also a place for credited work, such as peer-reviewed submissions, but I think his position is a strong one.

I think he's missing the point of Facebook a little bit, though; it isn't (at least in my experience) an exchange of ideas or the nexus of a creative endeavor. It's a really fancy online address book.

Given his role and experience I would have expected him to have significantly more savvy than he is showing. Facebook is the opposite of anonymity by design so he's showing me he is just a young pup with a big mouth.

Perhaps what he meant is that Zuckerberg does not understand privacy, now that I'll buy.

Society is a balance between privacy and sharing. When a so-called "social" website decides that everything that goes in the website should be "public by default" that really violates the public/private social balance.

In the absence of strong information/data privacy laws, only a fool would use Facebook to put more than even the basic public details about themselves; you only need take a look at the growing legal [dailycaller.com], workplace [google.com] and criminal [asylum.com] ramifications to see the end results.

The real tough part is that rabid facebook users can get you listed on Facebook just by "tagging" your photo. So you have to join to even purge the stupid... this is anti-social.

Exactly. Facebook account can be established with a pseudonym and there's no obligation to give out any info (or correct info). Likewise anyone can reveal his/her identity on 4chan. In any case they are not competing but complementing platforms.

I love all these idiotic comments that Facebook MUST be right because they are successful. Would you stand up for an evil dictator with the same brevity? Well, he's in charge and all who opposed him are in anonymous graves SO HE MUST BE RIGHT!!1!1

These are good points. That facebook snookered everyone about privacy and is headed by a cocksure asshole who doesn't care about HIS privacy (possibly BECAUSE he is privileged) doesn't make it right just because all the lies about privacy, all the broken promise

One of my very first bosses said to me, back when I was still a teenager, that if you have something to say, you should be able to stand behind it. Even if all you're doing is dropping a note into the cash register saying "we keep running out of nickels," you should have enough character to sign it and date it. If you feel like you can't do that, maybe you shouldn't bother saying what it is you were planning to say. I still mostly agree with him about that.

Sure, I understand there are many cases where it would be preferable, or even essential, to remain anonymous: when you're acting as a whistleblower, for example, or working against an oppressive government. But for most exchanges that we have on a day-to-day basis -- the kind of thing Facebook is good for -- I think anonymity just spoils it.

Compare MySpace to Facebook, for example. On the former, you're inundated with friend requests from "DarkLordSeth79" and "PowrGrrl," where their photographs are screen grabs from anime or movies. I haven't used MySpace in a long time, but ultimately I found the only meaningful exchanges I had on there were with the dozen or so close friends whom I knew well already. Anybody whom I didn't know came off as a troll cloaked in MMORP wish-fulfillment. (See also the people who post on YouTube videos.)

So I guess in summary, 4chan has its place, and maybe that should remain the place for it. Facebook is a place for something else, and I for one am thankful.

Hah, when you're anonymous it's easier to debate because personal qualities of the people making the arguments are unknown; therefore, the arguments are more likely to stand on their own (although people do speculate).

That "stand behind it" crap is really all just manly-sounding bullshit.

I'm Just Another Fucking Anonymous Coward.And I understand that the fuckers in the KKK wore hoods for a reason.But then again, the perpetrators of the original Boston Tea Party dressed up like Natives for a reason too.

Do you know any previously-closeted gays? Or currently-closed ones that haven't come out to everyone yet?

Have you ever lived in a small community?

Have you ever tried asking friends and family members about something personal and embarrassing to you, like erectile dysfunction? In a restaurant, or at a ball game?

Beyond the rare cases where one is actually threatened with death or imprisonment, social ostracization occurs all the time, and stigmas are attached to practically everything, especially in small communities. These make it difficult, even unbearable, to live openly. I recommend you read these Wiki articles:

Because I'm really Facebook friends of Admiral Viscount Nelson, who hasn't been alive for over two hundred years.

That's your choice, I guess. But as TFA points out, this is discouraged on Facebook, and the vast majority of my friends on there use their real names and an identifiable photograph. Most of the abstract ideas/dead people/companies/products that you can "be friends with" are actually pages, not user accounts, and the distinction between the two is pretty clear. For example, I don't believe pages can send you friend requests -- only the other way around.

Even now there are certain subjects to be discussed that you'd better not attach your name to. Some of these are in the 'politically correct' area People that in fact know better (in secret) will (in public) be hurrying to condemn you just to show everyone how correct and elevated they themselves are. Being redeemed after your death (like Galileo) doesn't really help you today. This is also true for certain topics in science.

By all means tell us what these topics are. I am pro-choice, against the death penalty, for gun control, pro-immigration, am generally liberal on social issues and moderately conservative on fiscal ones. Am I missing any bases here? Is the Man coming to put me to death like Galileo yet?

You're talking about political movements of the 1500s. I'm talking about connecting with my friends and family on Facebook. Big difference.

Some topics have to do with people that can afford to prosecute you on someone else's (company or taxpayer) dime. Remember that blogger that has to shell out 60,000 quid for saying things that are factually correct? Right. It would have been more convenient for him if he had presented these facts anonymously. Cowardly? Perhaps. Smart? For sure.

But who would have believed him? If you hide your identity to avoid people who are lik

If he thinks people should be anonymous on the Internet, why does law enforcement get any of 4chan's logs when something illegal is posted? Putting aside arguments over whether a post was, was not, should be, or should not be illegal, the information was handed over and IMHO that's not anonymity.

Why do you think that anonymity should extend to protecting blatantly criminal behavior? What kind of person does it take to even ask that question? By your statements you seem to want 4chan and anonymity in general to be a haven for lawlessness, as if you have something against the very idea of anonymity. I think you are trolling.

And he doesn't give a flying fuck. His business is making sure people are not anonymous, tracked, and well documented.

moot may have a valid point, but his goals are entirely different than Zuckerberg's.

Facebook is all about selling the data for people who are easily manipulated, Zuckerberg knows EXACTLY what he's doing, and he doesn't care that its 'A Bad Thing'. He's probably rather proud of it actually. You gotta admit, Facebook throws in its users face on a monthly basis that they are idiots and they

That when building a tool for the masses you go by their preferences, not your own valid-but-uncommon ones. And the plain fact of the matter is that most people do not mind the Facebook privacy model as evidenced by their enthusiastic uptake of the system and their lackadaisical attitude towards all these "ZOMG Facebook is the devil" news stories.

I get it, the/. and 4chan crowds have a different set of preferences than the average consumer. This has been beaten to death so many times that there's scarcely anything more to add there except to remind you guys that not everyone must have the same preferences as you. In fact, many prefer the convenience of Facebook over the loss of privacy. We keep hearing the refrain of "if they knew the truth they'd change their minds" and yet they continue to not change their minds not matter how much bleating goes on, probably because they know and don't change their minds. I know this is an odd thing to the partisan/zealot, but really some people understand your position, heard the arguments and just aren't convinced. Try not to take it too personally.

Heck, I've got a Facebook page that shares all sorts of banality. And truth is I wouldn't at all be upset if everything on there was printed out and handed to every person I've ever known (I would feel sorry if they decided to actually peruse through that banality, to be honest). Is is "authentic" as Moot wants it to be? No and I bloody don't want that in the first instance. The fact that he thinks I give a fig about his preferences for the content and tone of my communications is really astounding, roughly equivalent to me thinking that he should consult me on whether he should have jam or cheese on his toast (cheese, with a tiny bit of Marmite).

TL;DR version: Not everyone is like you. This is a good thing, the world would be boring if everyone was the same. Quit projecting your own values onto others, at least in such cases where they have taken clear and unequivocal steps to demonstrate that they do not share those values.

One point I want to add though is that you don't lose any privacy by using Facebook. If Facebook jacked into my computer and started posting all kinds of things that I didn't authorize it to, that would be losing privacy. However, for the most part, my Facebook profile gets no more data than I CHOOSE to give it. I'm not giving up privacy by using it because nothing I put there is of a private nature. Otherwise it wouldn't be on Facebook.

One point I want to add though is that you don't lose any privacy by using Facebook. If Facebook jacked into my computer and started posting all kinds of things that I didn't authorize it to, that would be losing privacy. However, for the most part, my Facebook profile gets no more data than I CHOOSE to give it.

What you choose to give it, PLUS what everybody you're linked to chooses to reveal about you or inadvertently reveals about you.

More damage has been done to me by the fact that my brother is completely incapable of not saying the stupidest shit at the most inopportune and inappropriate times than will probably ever be done by my Facebook profile.

With that said, if someone goes digging through my Facebook profile—say as a result of a job interview—and finds something there that's grounds not to hire me. Fine. It's fine. The last thing I want to do is work for a snoop and I know ahead o

That's precisely the problem. Zuckerberg is corrupted by his wealth. Zuckerberg pursues personal wealth, while Moot (presumably) does not. Even if it's only presumably, he isn't making his fortune through increasingly creepy invasions of his users' privacy.

The goal of the website is to connect people. Wouldn't maintaining anonymity preclude that? It seems like anonymity is actually the antithesis of Facebook, in which case I'd say Christopher Poole is the one who doesn't get it.

Would it be too much to expect that everyone to realize it is both corrupt and fallacious to claim that Zuckerberg's ideas are superior because of his vast wealth? Anyone who jumps to defend Zuckerberg purely on his wealth alone, without addressing the arguments, is defending corruption itself. Ignoring the merits of the arguments, if anyone is right, wouldn't it be the one whose ideas are not tainted by the corruption of wealth? (Unless of course the subject is how to most efficiently accumulate wealth, bu

I've noticed recently that a lot of places have suddenly switched to the Facebook commenting system for their websites with that assumption that forcing people to post with their real names will cut down on trolling.

It may well do that, but it certainly comes with a cost to non-troll posts as well. I, for one, have stopped visiting Techcrunch as a result -- let alone stopped posting there. People censor themselves when they know their friends will read their comments. This is not always a good thing, this includes keeping valid and valuable opinions to themselves simply because they don't want to offend anyone. Not to mention the number of people who will simply choose to say nothing at all. What Techcrunch and anyone who switches to this new commenting system has done is throw the baby out with the bathwater, then pat themselves on the back for getting rid of that pesky bathwater. It makes me kinda sad. The Facebookification of the Internet is the death of the internet. Go down that road at your own risk.

Are you trying to suggest that we shouldn't have anonymity because the bad side of it outweighs the good? I'd take the assholes, criminals and general wankers all day long as long as it means that people can have the ability to let the world know what is really going on in their various industries, countries, whatever-elses. If we were to have the ability to be anonymous removed then the world would be a far, far worse place. Anonymity is like everything else - what it achieves depends on what you decide to do with it - good or bad.

Of course not. Which is why if I ever did find a need to be anonymous, I wouldn't be so stupid as to leave a trail of neon paint leading back to my bucket and expect everyone else to be colorblind to that hue.

Do you have any numbers whatsoever to back up your claim that most anonymous entities are criminals, trolls, or murderers? Or are you just making shit up to back up the same position that you have taken numerous times in previous threads regarding anonymity, blair1q? Because if I recall correctly (and I do), you have made claims in the past that are basically along the lines of "If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear."

For those of us with a sense of privacy, and who are a bit schooled in history, we realize just how silly and dangerous such a position is. So please, blair1q, before you go spewing more opinionated bile around Slashdot, could you back up some of your claims that:

Most people who use it do so to commit crimes, from trolling to murder.

Mind you, I count such practices as keeping sexual orientation, religious beliefs, political stances, and thoughts regarding your opinion of coworkers and/or bosses secret a form of anonymity, in the sense that you are keeping your personal details regarding those matters anonymous in the eyes of the public.

I base my claims on the comments you have previously made in this thread, [slashdot.org] amongst others. You might have do dig a bit to find your comments there, as many of them have been modded troll, but your position regarding anonymity is there for all to see. There were a few other threads in your comment history where I found similar positions taken, that anonymity is useless to most people other than criminals, but I really can't be bothered to dig through your comment history just because you are suffering a case

i don't see me going AC to post an unpopular opinionmy karma's fine. excellent, even.and if someone decides to karma-bomb me, i can point it out to the staff and they'll look behind the magic AC curtain and fix it.but, i don't share your observation that there's a 50:1 ratio of good:really bad; nor did i limit the bad to "overtly racist or whatever". i still like my n_good n_bad estimate.

They are different at ends of the spectrum, but too much of either is bad. 4chan is worthless, plain and simple (that includes so-called Anonymous). Facebook is a not worthless, but abuses what they have/know.

Much like politics, you never want someone too far right or too far left.

Yep yep.

Republican: Society needs less sharing in order to create incentives!
Democrat: Society needs more sharing in order to create a middle class!
Me: Shut up, you're both right.

Vulgar, irreverent, mob mentality... Can you honestly say facebook is none of those things? Wouldn't you say that it is all of those things, if you were honest? Is the veneer of "manners" and censorship really so important for its own sake?

Maybe your mom would feel more comfortable in the lie (see what I did there?), but 4chan's/b/ is just as valid a form of human interaction and expression as facebook -- it merely operates by different rules, with different norms, and a different history. To deny that 4chan is important as a feature of the human condition is to deny that anyone has a mental life: the life that we don't blurt out in public for fear of social repercussions. Nevertheless, this aspect of humans does still exist, and you won't make it disappear just because you get rid of 4chan and other anonymous modes of communication. Repression makes things worse, never better.

You do need both -- and you can't assert that 4chan is "worthless" and be self-consistent. Facebook, in all its corporate data-farm glory, is no more legitimately "good" no matter how much less child porn, no matter how much less gore, no matter how popular it is, and no matter how wealthy its owners.

You're a a soft-skulled, sophomoric, self-righteous hypocrite. It doesn't say anything good about/. that you were modded up (why expect an enlightened, objective moderation response from the anonymous internet, though).